BrainSell Technologies - ContactCenterWorld.com Blog

If you’ve found this blog, you are likely researching CRM systems for your company, and have realized the market is saturated with lots of solutions all claiming to be the “best.” Here at BrainSell, we take a step back and make sure the software being selected is indeed the best for your business; that is why we are partners with over 30 different vendors. We understand not everyone fits the same mold.

Most CRM systems have 5 key categories for consideration when identifying which system will best compliment to your business process.

Sales force automation (SFA)

SFA is the use of software and process engines to automate tasks in CRM. Tools like bpm’online are built on a backbone of a process, automating everything from customer journey to marketing and sales. Other solutions like SugarCRM offer a bpm 2.0 compliant process engine in their enterprise edition, Salesforce has Lightning Process Builder, along with Workflow and Visual Workflow available in their Lightning Enterprise and Lightning Unlimited editions. Automating your sales processes will ensure your users follow the same business processes and your clients follow the same journey. This is not only a time saver but also forces organizations to document and fully understand business processes. Having your finger on the pulse of your sales teams and customer interactions is never a bad thing.

Marketing and Marketing Automation

If your marketing and sales teams still don’t share data, you are missing out on game-changing information about your prospects and customers. Not to be confused with email marketing, marketing automation is a platform that will centralize all of your digital marketing activities. Salesforce offers Marketing Cloud AKA Pardot, SugarCRM has developed a strong relationship and integration with Act-On, and bpm’online has a “marketing” user and interface but hasn’t fully developed their integration points. Infor CRM (formally SalesLogix) has an integration with SalesFusion and Microsoft Dynamics 365 has options available like Act-On and Click Dimensions. These tools will give you the ability to see marketing activities from your clients and prospects inside CRM, apply lead scoring techniques and adopt a “Compel with Content” strategy, as outlined in Predictable Revenue. More information about how these systems work together can be found in our webinar recording “7 Steps to Create a Lead Generation Machine.” < - link to webinar

Reporting

Please stop making people use Excel for complex reports. It’s mean and likely not accurate. Most top-tier CRM systems have strong reporting features, but don’t be fooled by the difference between filters and reports. The right CRM should be able to report cross-module, have drillable graphs, and the ability to schedule automatic delivery of custom and out of the box reports. Looking at the same CRM sample group, bpm’online does not offer a true reporting module. Salesforce leads the pack in this category, since not only can you create custom reports that touch data from across all modules (objects), but you can create great looking graphs and schedule delivery, then take the next step with the AppExchange. SugarCRM and Microsoft both have full ride reporting capabilities, but can both be complex to understand and in some cases, cannot touch across modules for simple tasks like lead conversion rates.

Mobile

Road warriors rejoice! The CRM community heard you and made some significant updates in the world of mobile applications. This past year, SugarCRM released Mobile SDK, allowing the development of fully customizable mobile applications, yet the original SugarCRM mobile app is also still available. The Salesforce mobile app is, in a word, awesome. A full mobile SDK is available as well as the original app, that tout’s full customizations, an Apple Watch app, dashboards and Click-to-Dial. Microsoft has kept the “pin” feature from the 2016 homepage in Windows, which is the limit of the customizations one can make. The interface seems slow compared to Salesforce and SugarCRM, however, large investments are being made in the new Dynamics 365 offerings. Perhaps a new mobile app will be one of them. Infor CRM has kept up with their mobile offering, maintaining SalesLogix’s strength in the mobile app realm… Bpm’online has an online/offline mobile app, as well. It starts with bare bones and you must configure and customize the app before using it. Once configured, it’s as strong as the out of the box SugarCRM and Salesforce apps.

Ecosystem

In the past, CRM systems used to be a standalone platform with limited bells and whistles that would either fit your business or be an “ok” fit. With the rise of Salesforce and SugarCRM as industry leaders, more developers have created add-ons and integrations that allow businesses to build a complete solution. Examples would be connecting your VOIP system for call logging, email integrations for GMAIL or Outlook, and perhaps a big data tool/Business intelligence solution. Don’t listen to the “we’re working on it” answer when evaluating CRM systems. Either the platform has a large ecosystem or it does not.

To see how some top-tier solutions, score side by side download our full 2018 CRM comparison guide here - http://bit.ly/2FmU6Db

SugarCRM has launched new user functionality and additional features with its latest 7.10 release. The release is available for on-demand customers at this time. BrainSell, a top Sugar Elite partner is hosting a live webinar to review the new exciting features on December 6, 2017 at 2 pm ET. Register below for the webinar!

Most Exciting Feature: Drill-down reports!

Sugar users have always been able to put reports on their dashboards, but drilling into those reports from a dashboard wasn’t possible until now! If you want to see the exact data that makes up a report, you can just click on that dashboard report and SEE the exact data. This is a huge time saver!

Improved UI: New Sidecar Interfacefor legacy modules

Sugar’s awesome new sidecar interface now appears on the emails module (and some others too), this allows users to view and work with stored email records much like they view and work with records in other Sidecar modules. Further, users can configure multiple outgoing SMTP email accounts. The sidecar interface is also now widely available across many other modules – Contracts, Currencies and modules related to products & quotes – Manufactures, Shipping providers and tax rates. It even allows for filtering based on the Teams filter.

There’s more!

Sugar also added new shareable functionality to its dashboards. Users can now share these dashboards with different teams and pull in customized views as well. The rules builder has been completely redesigned for usability with improvements that include row sorting via drag and drop, mass moving of rows, and mass deleting of rows. Additional configuration options have been added for configuring SSO using SAML. Lastly, previous issues with failed log-in attempts for instances with user-generated password expiration settings or those using LDAP over SSL have been fixed.

How does the new release benefit enterprise users?

With the most flexible platform, intuitive user experience, and wide industry adoption, Sugar Enterprise can provide a fully personalized approach to forging extraordinary relationships with every customer. As the pace of business gets faster than ever, you can set-up disruptive innovation and provide more information to customers at their fingertips.

With the new updates, Sugar is better than ever. The new release eliminates some of the glitches with the previous editions and paves the way for an improved user interface. Build a standout customer experience with Sugar by getting in touch with BrainSell today.

As SugarCRM users, our BrainSell team found that managing multiple calendars can be a pain, as did our clients. They asked for guidance on how to better manage their calendars, and we responded by developing a solution.

Meet BrainCal, a SugarCRM addon that provides you with clear insight into selected users’ calendars. Simply select the Users from the BrainCal dashlet in the Calendar module to see their activities (color-coded by User) – all on one Calendar!

You can even select which Event Types – Meeting, Call, Task – you wish to have displayed.

By contrast, SugarCRM’s default Calendar module will display selected user calendars as one after the other that you need to scroll through to see availability

The steps to view shared calendars is as follows:

Click Shared

Click User List

Select each individual User from the list, using the CTRL key on your keyboard to select multiple

Click Select

The result is each selected user’s calendar is displayed one after the other, in alphabetical order by first name (your calendar may not be on top). The user’s name is on the top left of their calendar (noted by the red box around it) and all of their activities – Meetings, Calls, Tasks – displayed.

If you’re looking for a clean, easy to use calendar integrated with your SugarCRM instance, that allows you to quickly overlay other users’ activities, take a look at BrainCal on Sugar Outfitters: https://www.sugaroutfitters.com/addons/braincal.

Before accounting was hip, a little-known start up was aiming to change that. Nestled in the foothills of the Silicon Valley, amidst the high-tech innovation and development hub of the country, Intacct emerged in 1999 as a leading provider of cloud Financial Management Solutions, prepared to take the accounting world by storm.

Since that time, Intacct has accumulated widespread acclaim across the industry and the world, igniting an excitement for the future of accounting solutions not seen before. Intacct customers boast high satisfaction rates with the multi-tenant foundation that brings a robust technological infrastructure to their organization without the high costs, maintenance, or complexity of an on-site solution. The cloud based software can be accessed anywhere, from any device, and offers a user experience that’s modern and easy to learn. In addition, it connects easily with other cloud solutions, so users are free to choose business applications based on functional fit, not integration concerns. How hip is that?

Intacct – the perfect complement

So hip, in fact, that UK-based Sage, the other major player in cloud accounting and financial management software, acquired it on July 28, 2017. Sage has been on a mission to expand its payroll, HR, payments, and accounting services and this is a major step in that goal. You could say that Intacct fills a void in the Sage family. As a provider of small business management and accounting solutions, Sage is now more well rounded with Intacct’s experience in providing software solutions to midsize, large, and global companies in North America. “Intacct opens up huge opportunities in the North American market representing over half of our total addressable market,” noted Sage CEO Stephen Kelly in the company’s public announcement. As a result, Sage boasts that it can now ‘legitimately claim to offer the only cloud based financial management solution you will need from startup to enterprise.’

Intacct customers will benefit greatly from the merger as well. Partnering with Sage will provide them the backing of a much larger brand with R&D resources to match. This $850 million acquisition merger is Sage’s biggest deal to date. Accelerating their growth, they have acquired three other companies (Fairsail, Compass, and North American Payments Disposal) in 2017 alone.

“Intacct acquisition is a powerful move to attract users who would previously not have considered Sage,” said Brian Tankersley, Director of Strategic Relationships at K2 Enterprises, “I think this means that Sage has a much stronger range of solutions for accounting needs, and it fills a need they had for a native cloud product to create a more complete set of offerings.”

The trend is cloud, cloud, cloud

In the rapidly evolving market of accounting technology, the trend is in solutions, not tools.

The merger of Sage and Intacct represents this trend and not only shows the duo’s commitment to cloud-based technology but also recognizes the transition and change in the industry as a whole. In addition to cloud solutions, the duo will focus on developing the automation of back-office functions, a journey that started with Sage Live application several years ago. There is also a drive toward fully integrated systems with best of breed platforms such as Salesforce, with both Intacct and Sage Live having a powerful inbuilt connection to it.

What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander

Sage has extended its mid-market cloud strategy by adding one of the top independent cloud-based accounting packages on the market, Intacct, creating a win-win solution for both companies and exponential growth potential for global businesses.

Robert Reid, CEO of Intacct who will remain in his executive position, expressed his thoughts in response to the merger: “We are excited to become part of Sage because we are relentlessly focused on the same goal which is to deliver the most innovative cloud solutions for our customers. Intacct is growing rapidly in our market and we are proud to be a recognized customer satisfaction leader across midsize, large and global enterprise businesses. By combining our strengths with those of Sage, we can jointly accelerate success for our customers.”

Integrity wins the day

Intacct chose to partner with Sage in order to strengthen technology, a decision of integrity over IPO, a common decision for late term start ups. “This is an ‘overnight success’ many years in the making,” said Bessemer Venture Partners’ Byron Deeter. As an investor and former board member, Deeter believes “Intacct is at the scale where they could be a public company today, but instead chose to partner with Sage … and the opportunity to have a broader impact together.” It’s a win for Sage, for Intacct, and for global companies who will benefit.

Sage and Intacct’s mutual dedication to creating a high-performance culture within the accounting software marketplace is now doing so together, Moving forward, Intacct will be known as Sage Intacct.

Almost every technology developer will tell you their product is a game-changer, but with Sugar CRM Hint, it’s the truth. Hint takes traditional CRM functionality and adds a “hint” of artificial intelligence. Out of the gate, this tool makes sales teams more productive and moving forward it will change the competitive landscape completely between those companies deploying Hint and those that don’t.

Relationship Intelligence

SugarCRM Hint is the latest product from SugarCRM and is the first in its new Relationship Intelligence product line. Hint combines customer relationship management with a taste of artificial intelligence.

To understand how this works in practice, it’s important to remember how traditional CRM solutions work. A CRM brings significant value to your business by improving the efficiency of your sales team, consolidating account information, tracking sales activities status, and providing visibility into the sales lifecycle.

However, a CRM solution is only as good as the information you put into it. Without any data, it’s idle. Manually researching, verifying, and inputting that data is an incredibly time-consuming but essential part of the selling process. This is why Hint is a game-changer.

With Hint, you enter some very basic information – name and email address – and then the autopilot kicks in. Hint searches through 70 data sources to find information that correlates to the contact. The personal and professional information located is then auto-populated into Sugar. From the very beginning, sales can build a more intelligence relationship with their prospect without the time-consuming researching and entry process that crushes their productivity.

Benefits of SugarCRM

Greater efficiency – as your team will no longer have to research information on prospects or input that information into the CRM, they will have more time to focus on turning prospects into clients.

Deeper intelligence – the 70 sources that Hint searches include social media data, government data, and other sources of public data. This gives you a deeper insight into the prospect than you might get through manual searches.

Hint is just the debut of SugarCRM’s Relationship Intelligence product line. These products will continue to build on the Hint platform likely adding predictive analytics and richer artificial intelligence. Sales teams will be better able to target and predict sales opps. Pipelines will get bigger. Sales cycles will shorten. And revenues will soar.

Learn more about Hint with a personal tour from SugarCRM Group Product Manager, Deepak Deolalika on August 9 at 2PM EDT.

It’s a dirty little secret in business that sales people that embrace their CRM are far and few between. In fact, I will go one step further; most sales people hate their CRM. Why? It is tedious. It slows them down. They are compensated by closing deals – which means creating as many opportunities as possible and then chasing, consulting, schmoozing until the sun rises.

In fact, sometimes the only time they are focused on their CRM is the night before the weekly sales team call, when they batch update all of their opportunities so that they don’t catch heat the next day on the call for looking like a slacker.

Why can’t sales managers get their team to use CRM?

Of course the story is much different for management. Sales managers love their CRM. With it they can monitor every action of their team, analyze their performance, and see who has been making their calls, synopses of calls, who is their top performer and who needs to have “the chat.” Only guess what? There is often not a lot of data to report. Sure, opportunities get added, and closed deals get updated with lightning speed. But what steps were taken and when, who said what and when, and why is Kevin unable to close as much business as Kellie, or vice versa, remains a mystery – and so sales managers become masters at creating stories that they can feed on up the food chain. They don’t feel great about having to make up so much for the executive team but the reverse looks even worse for them. No one wants to explain why they can’t get their team to use their CRM – the very one that they personally lobbied so heavily to purchase in the first place. They are tired of starting off every sales meeting with a lecture about keeping their CRM records up to date. Why are sales people so lazy when it comes to CRM?

What went wrong with your CRM?

Before the invention of CRM people used rolodexes, index cards, paper and pen to keep track of contacts, sales opportunities and closed deals. It was unproductive as heck and when a sales person jumped ship, they took the knowledge stored in their address books and heads with them. CRM came along like the new sheriff in town. Promising order, compliance and a permanent record of customer information. It seemed too good to be true: organization, order and data.

The only problem we have all learned is that sales is both an art and a science. Data is important. We learn that it takes X number of calls to create X number of opportunities that result in X number of closed deals. That’s the science. But we also know that it is not just numbers. Certain sales people out-perform other sales people. They both may make exactly the same number of calls each day, send the same number of emails, work the same number of hours, but one is able to sell more, sell faster.

There is a new sheriff in town

CRM was a tremendous improvement on index cards but now we have a newer sheriff in town. Unlike the old sheriff, the new sheriff is really smart and sexy, and most importantly loved by both sales people and sales management alike. The old sheriff is still sticking around. In fact the two are sharing the job – and it’s a godsend for businesses. They old sheriff provides order; the new sheriff makes everyone’s lives easier, more efficient, more insightful. The new sheriff is even savvier than the old and integrates well with almost all the systems that the old sheriff established, systems like SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salesforce. The new sheriff is a tool called Tenfold. It integrates your phone system with your CRM – and presto – you have CRM Redux. Tenfold’s functionality is the best thing that has ever happened to CRM, sales teams and sales managers. Read on.

No time just now? Register for our Webinar this Wednesday, 7/19/17 at 2PM EDT “Integrate Your Phone System with Your CRM.”

Tenfold’s functionality will blow your mind

It’s hard to know where to start because Tenfold’s functionality is a true game-changer for organizations. It increases sales productivity, improves relationships with customers, provides rich analytics and insight into the sales process –and best of all is an intuitive platform that delivers ROI right out of the gate.

Automatic call logging. In or out of the office, calls are automatically logged into your CRM as they happen. Records of sales calls with date, time and length of call happen in real time. No stopping in-between calls for admin work. No lag in CRM updates if reps are on the road. All calls are logged all the time. What a concept.

Click to dial. It’s ironic that we all use speed dialing on our mobile devices for personal business but traditional dialing for selling. Stop that right now. Increase sales productivity “tenfold” by giving your sales team this basic functionality. Dialing takes time. Time is money. You do the math.

Voice analytics. Through phone system integration you can now record and analyze sales conversations. Whoa. We know that sales people who do more listening than talking are more successful but short of joining every sales call as a third-party how do you know who is doing more listening? More intriguing is Tenfold’s ability to “listen” for phrases or trigger words. Want to know why some of your team closes deals faster than others? Why customers are complaining about the “attitude” of someone on your team. Well, now you can find out through Tenfold’s powerful analytics.

360° View of Customer data. With Tenfold installed and integrated with your CRM you now have instance access to complete customer information. When a customer calls in, a panel appears like magic on your desktop with aggregated current information about the customer. Your customers and prospects will feel delighted at the ease of communication. No rehashing of previous conversations, no guessing, just helpful productive conversations that lead to new business, more renewals and happier customers.

But wait there is more

Tenfold has so much functionality, the list of features seems endless. Why don’t you join our webinar Wednesday, July 19, to find out more? It’s the first of our Summer Webinar Series. You can register here.

“People will never be replaced by machines. In the end, life and business are about human connections. And computers are about trying to murder you in a lake. And to me the choice is easy.”

– Michael Scott, Dunder Mifflin

Michael Scott was onto something

Michael Scott, crack salesperson turned branch manager, in the American television series, The Office, used all sorts of tricks for nurturing personal connections with his clients. His rolodex of index cards for example, contained not only core information about each client, but meticulous color-coded notes, listing personal information about each one such as their birthdate, name of their spouse and recaps of past conversations. Going into sales meetings, Michael was equipped with what he believed to be the essential sales tool: aggregated customer information. In the end, life and business are about relationships and knowing your customers is critical to sales success. Lucky for us, Michael Scott’s personalized customer approach can now be fully actualized through digital automation.

Capture information effortlessly

Since more and more business is conducted via phone in this digital age, capturing and analyzing phone data is critical for business success. It takes the Michael Scott approach and ramps it up exponentially, or…Tenfold. Imagine being able to consolidate every system of record into a real-time 360-degree view of your customers? Tenfold integrates your phone system and voice analytics with your other systems of record. Tenfold describes their software this way: “Running a modern day business is like having a bad set of windshield wipers in a storm, you get 20% visibility into the activity that your team is doing and not enough to really know what is going on. Tenfold installs a new set of windshield wipers that gives you 100% visibility into your business.”

How does it fit in with CRM?

Tenfold integrates with top CRM’s: Sugar, Salesforce and MicrosoftDynamics. Simple to configure and implement. The best part is how it improves the performance of your CRM and your sales team.

Find out how easy it is to get started. Join our live webinar on July 19 at 2PM EDT.

The ultimate sales tool

Tenfold’s top features are aggregated, automated and actionable tools. Automated dialing, easy logging of sales call notes and mobile capture make for enthusiastic adoption by sales. A dictionary of commonsensical terms published helps create actions based on what words you type. These actions lead to capturing intelligence, making deeper connections and closing deals. The system automatically captures every business call, email, text, and chat on your existing enterprise system without manual input. Tenfold aggregates systems of record from all departments into a Universal Data Layer (UDL) in real time and displays a single unified view of all aggregated customer information.

Results

Sales reps can put their color-coded index cards away! The actionable customer intelligence is available in-context when it matters the most—during the sales call. All this functionality adds up to incredible ROI. Companies are realizing big results: gains in outbound sales volume, valuable intelligence and actionable insights which lead to deeper connections, bigger pipelines and faster closings. We think even Michael Scott would have approved.

Watch our testimonial: https://vimeo.com/215681355

Want to find out more? See a live demo by registering for our upcoming webinar. Register here.

Top CRM Feature Comparison Guide

We love Customer Relationship Management (CRM) here at BrainSell. We are elite partners with Sugar CRM. Our customers often ask us “What’s the difference? I’m so familiar with SalesForce but it seems like Sugar might be better. How do I know which customer relationship management option is best for my business?”

You can find our entire analysis here.

Each CRM software we partner with offers a unique set of features to its user base. There are certainly various defining perks of each software, and so we make sure to learn as much as we can about each respective business’ processes and structure before we diagnose which software will best suit their protocol. We wanted to create something tangible for our customers so they can learn more about the comparison of the top CRM softwares so they can be educated consumers. In that vein, we conducted a thorough feature comparison list of Sugar, SalesForce, and Microsoft Dynamics. We used the following categories to base our comparison upon:

Overall Customer Satisfaction

Sales

Marketing

Customer Support

Reporting

Mobile & Social

Platform

Integration

Are you currently using a CRM software? Maybe one that was not mentioned above? We want to learn more about the pain points within your CRM usage. Is your current solution working for you? Is it more trouble than it’s worth?

Let us know! We want to help you choose the best solution to optimize your processes and create a better sales and customer relationship management experience. Download our comparison and we will get in touch https://mktg.brainsell.net/acton/media/14260/top-crm-comparison-guide

Fieldmagic: The CRM Field Service Platform of the Future

In an age of ever evolving enterprise mobility, the field service industry is increasingly diverse. From machine sales and maintenance, fire safety, electrical and IT, to garden landscaping, field service businesses are expanding across multiple industries like never before.

Across this spectrum, most field service businesses share basic requirements such as job management, time and materials tracking, maintenance scheduling, invoicing and purchase order management. However, every business is unique, the differences found in the details of their processes as well as the reports that each business requires to run efficiently.

Customer relations management - or CRM - is a software business solution platform that can provide you with broad enough coverage to meet your basic requirements while flexible enough to fit your specific needs. A CRM system is an invaluable tool for businesses that want to grow and scale.

Choosing a CRM field service platform is not an easy task. We’re here to help! BrainSell is hosting a free webinar on Fieldmagic on Thursday, April 20th at 2 PM EDT. Register below.

So is it really worth it? Yes, and here are three reasons why.

1) Tailor processes specifically to your requirements

In field service, suppose you need to track jobs against specific departments, or you would like email notifications to be sent to a specific team of users when a job of a given type is completed?

Or perhaps you simply would like to configure the language of your system to fit your industry? A good CRM system will allow for all these specifications and will minimally, have two key elements with the system. First, a customization studio whereby you can tailor the fields, attributes, labels and business logic in your quotes, jobs, sites and any other module that you leverage. Second, a workflow engine that allows you to configure notifications (both customer and internal) designed around your business’ processes. Some of the more advanced platforms will even let you build entire custom modules to fit your specific needs. The ability to tailor your processes specifically to your requirements equates to flexibility. That is one of the best reasons to choose a CRM platform.

When implementing a system designed to improve business performance, one of the key aspects is how you’re going to measure and report on that performance. Every business is different and needs to measure different metrics. CRM platforms measure results.

Imagine this:

Is the problem you’re trying to solve a 7-day turn-around between an inspection or maintenance job and when you actually provide a quote to your customers? If so, how do you measure this? In this case, you could track timestamps between maintenance completion, quote creation, and fault resolution. A CRM provides the framework to implement this level of business logic, and the in-built reporting engine to report and analyze this data over time. Compare this with a traditional field services system that doesn’t have that flexibility - you’re reliant on the software developer to implement this capability that will benefit your business, something that gets less likely the more unique your requirements are.

Configurable drag and drop reporting, and personalized dashboards are a key component of any good CRM platform. By choosing a CRM platform for your field services business, your system can help you solve your problems today and tomorrow.

3) Integration and App Ecosystem

Most of the major CRM platforms these days provide open APIs, which allow you to integrate your CRM and field services platform with any other major systems within your business. In addition, many of the leading solutions include an app ecosystem that lets you extend your platform beyond its original use case. Both Salesforce and SugarCRM have a strong app ecosystem. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is also starting to evolve in that area as well. By leveraging a CRM platform with an open API, you have the ability to integrate with those ERPs using an integration tool. If you happen to be stuck on a closed field services platform, your options are limited. You’re often left with the choice of migrating to a new system, or putting up with double entry across your organization.

What does this mean to your business? It means choice. Perhaps you’d like to be able to store customer acceptance emails against the quotes that you generate. By choosing a CRM as your platform, you have those options.

Interested in learning more?

Automating your business from the field can be complex and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Flexibility, metrics and integration are three key reasons anyone looking for field service solutions should strongly consider a CRM platform. Interested in learning more? Join us on Thursday, April 20th at 2 PM EDT for our webinar on Fieldmagic. Register here.

Database Giant, Oracle, Now Owns NetSuite

As of November 7th, 2016, Oracle now owns NetSuite. Oracle spent $9.3 billion to expand its cloud footprint and marketing to smaller companies. The settlement of this deal was crucial for NetSuite. It was uncertain if the deal would finalize and that put NetSuite’s sales on pause. NetSuite definitely had some integration trouble soon after the deal, but Oracle now reports that their total cloud revenues are 13% this year, so it’s up 8% from this time last year. So why is this an important factor in deciding a cloud-based ERP platform? To learn more register for our webinar on NetSuite vs. Intacct on Thursday, April 6th at 2:00 PM EDT.

What does this merge mean?

Oracle is a global corporation and this merger does a great deal to their standing in the competitive cloud-based market. They want to advance their own cloud capabilities, while also competing in the small and mid-tier markets. With the acquisition of NetSuite, they can now offer more cloud services in more industries and countries. In addition, Oracle claims it will run NetSuite as an independent company, but historically Oracle has fully integrated its acquired companies. As a result, existing NetSuite customers will see a price increase.

Oracle’s plans for NetSuite

Oracle plans to focus on ERP in its cloud apps portfolio. They’re going to use NetSuite’s total addressable market to gather the small and midmarket businesses. The success of this merger will then rest on Oracle’s ability to keep those small and midmarket businesses and grow the market. Historically, Oracle has catered to larger corporations. The question remains, can Oracle move downstream effectively?

Sales teams need a CRM? Why?

Historically, sales teams have used pen and paper to gather and qualify leads. They’d run around the office without a clear process. Now, sales teams have adopted systems that can help them gather and qualify leads faster than Joe Schmoe can write down his chicken scratch notes. Sales can be tough, especially for the under-organized, and you either have a solid sales process or you don’t. Those who have adopted a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) usually have a process. Sales people are able to juggle dozens of leads and opportunities when they’re in a database. Goodbye paper!

However, some CRM systems can be a drag. If a system isn’t implemented with the sales team’s needs in mind, it can end in ill-adoption and a total waste of time and money. Bring your sales team into the CRM implementation process!

A CRM can help solve your sales issues, along with other minor problems that come up. If you’re having trouble finding a CRM that perfectly fits your business, BrainSell can help. We are hosting a free webinar on Salesforce.com vs. SugarCRM on Thursday, March 30th at 2:00 PM EDT. Register for the webinar and find out which CRM is right for your sales team.

5 Reasons Why Sales Teams Need a CRM:

1) Safe Storage Space

Your sales team can relax knowing their contacts, leads, opportunities, contracts, etc. are safely filed away in the CRM.

2) Time Management

Sales teams can prioritize tasks and address leads in a timely manner. They’ll spend more time with customers, which leads to more closed deals and a stronger customer base.

3) Reports

Sales teams can easily inform management of their current sales with an automated process that prepares their weekly or monthly reports.

4) Targeting/Marketing

Segment data and identify valuable opportunities based on selections made in the CRM. Your sales team will save time on writing in leads and searching through disorganized data lists.

5) Save Money

CRM systems are an investment and if implemented correctly, they can save or make you money.

Ready to progress into the future? Learn which CRM is right for your sales team at our Salesforce.com vs. SugarCRM webinar. Register here: Salesforce.com vs. SugarCRM

Top CRM Competitors: Salesforce.com vs. SugarCRM

Both Salesforce.com and SugarCRM are pioneers in the CRM movement. Salesforce was the first to offer cloud-based CRM and continues to lead as developers in enterprise cloud computing. In comparison, SugarCRM was orginally an open source program, but have introduced enterprise options to meet the needs of their customers.

1) Not sure which CRM is right for you?

Searching for a CRM that perfectly fits your business is not easy. We’re here to help. BrainSell is hosting a free webinar on Salesforce.com vs. SugarCRM on Thursday, March 30th at 2:00 PM ET.

What you will learn:

Price comparisons

Feature comparisons

Ease of use for your sales team

A live demo of both solutions

Who should attend:

People in sales and sales management

Lead generators

Anyone who wants help determining which CRM is right for their sales team

2) Which one is better?

It’s not that one is better than the other. Both Salesforce.com and SugarCRM have a lot of the same features and offers. It’s mainly a difference in price. Top considerations when looking at the two systems include:

Price- What is your company willing to spend on a CRM including its potential add-ons and yearly fees?

User interface- Which one do your sales users like more?

Integrations- Do you have any systems that need to be integrated and is that integration already built in one system?

Deployment- SugarCRM is cloud based, but can also be hosted on premise, whereas Salesforce.com is cloud only.

3) What are the differences? For a full comparison guide click here

Editions and Pricing:

Salesforce.com now offers four different editions, including Starter, Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited all with no required minimum of users. Editions and pricing will differ depending on if you choose exclusively Sales Cloud offerings or if you want Sales + Service combined.

SugarCRM has three different editions, including Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate all with a minimum of 10 users. Each edition includes different features within these sections: sales, marketing, service, data management, etc.

Salesforce.com and SugarCRM are the top CRM competitors and in order to grow your business you should invest in the right system. For more information and to register for the webinar please visit: Salesforce.com vs. SugarCRM

Salesforce.com vs. SugarCRM: Which One is Right for Your Sales Team?

What:

BrainSell to host free webinar on Salesforce.com vs. SugarCRM.

When:

Thursday, March 30th, 2017 from 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT.

About:

With so many CRM solutions to choose from, how do you know which one is right for your sales team? And which one will they even use? A leading consulting partner of both Salesforce.com and SugarCRM will run through both products in the point of view of your sales users.

What you’ll learn in the webinar:

Price comparisons

Feature comparisons

Ease of use for your sales team

A live demo of both solutions

Who should attend the webinar:

People in sales and sales management

Lead generators

Anyone who wants help determining which CRM is right for their sales team

If each CRM software were represented by an NFL team, which team would your CRM be?

As an objective reseller of just about every major CRM platform, BrainSell compared NFL teams to CRM software platforms based on their individual “personalities”.

Being headquartered in Massachusetts, we are huge Patriot’s fans here at BrainSell. We have no prejudice when it comes to our software - so, to keep this fun and truly unbiased, we left the Patriots off of this list. Please remember to leave a comment below if you disagree (or agree) with any of these pairings.

CRM Superbowl 2017 - Which of these teams take home the title?

Disclaimer:These comparisons are meant to be funny and parody the tools we use everyday. We’re not trying to be bias toward any particular team or particular CRM, this is only in the spirit of fun! Make sure to comment if you don’t agree with any of the listings.

Oracle CRM is comparable to the . They are both very expensive (Jay Cutler of the Bears is the highest paid player in the NFL, Oracle is the most expensive CRM). They are also both the oldest CRM and NFL franchises, which is why we started with them first. Like Oracle, the Bears haven’t made many splashes lately in development, and they have many eyes on them to see if they can regain past supremacy.

Act! CRM is comparable to the . It’s been around since ancient times, but is still very relevant today. The Packers also fit Act!’s M.O. of being a small business solution. The Packers represent the smallest city inthe National Football League, just as Act! CRM represents many small businesses. Act! is also extremely user friendly, meanwhile, the Packers are the only publicly-owned team in the NFL. We think Act! is a good fit to represent the Packers.

Salesforce is comparable to the . Like the Cowboys CEO Jerry Jones, Salesforce has a charismatic, larger-than-life CEO in Mark Benioff (Benioff is a Giants fan). The Cowboys just built the most modern, up-to-date stadium available with all the bells in whistles. Similarly, Salesforce has just bought a tricked-out west coast headquarters building in San Francisco. Another common trait is that both of their stocks have been way up in the past three years after rebuilding in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Dallas also has one of the strongest offensive lines in the league, similarly, Salesforce is built on a rock-solid platform.

SugarCRM is comparable to the SugarCRM is a native bay-area product, and like the 49ers, has a techy, open-sourcefanbase. SugarCRM has been the fastest growing CRM in the industry for the past three years, likewise, San Francisco has been one of the fastest growing cities in America the past three years. SugarCRM’s employees are also huge 49ers fans. Although Salesforce is now headquartered in San Francisco, they are originally from New York City.

Dynamics CRM is comparable to the . Dynamics is one of the best on-premise (internally hosted) options available. Likewise, the Seattle Seahawks play very well at home. Dynamics CRM is also a native product of Seattle, as that is where Microsoft Headquarters is located. Dynamics CRM also has a similar color scheme to Seattle (green and blue in the logo).

NetSuite CRM is comparable to the . The Philadelphia Eagles coach, Chip Kelly integrates every aspect of football into his offense. Unfortunately for NetSuite, the Eagles real strength is their offense, just as NetSuite’s real strength is their ERP tools.NetSuite is one of the most efficient tools, but is not deep on both sides of the ball (CRM and ERP). NetSuite, like the Eagles, is one of the most efficient franchises on the market. Like the Eagles playbook, NetSuite continues to push the boundaries of innovation in the software world.

Infor CRM, formerly SalesLogix, is comparable to the . Like the Titans, Infor is the latestCRM to undergo a name change (Infor was Saleslogix, the Titans were the Houston Oilers). Infor CRM, like the Titans, provides superior value in a CRM system. The Titans were named by Forbes as the most affordable tickets to any NFL team. Because of the value that Infor CRM provides, they are the Tennessee Titans. Infor and Tennessee are both known to have great leadership that heavily invests in their respective franchises.

Zoho CRM is comparable to the . Zoho has done a great job with their own SEO in marketing their product, so they often come up next to the major CRM platforms on Google results. Likewise, somehow the Cardinals have maintained relevance in the league in the past 10 years despite not being a team with top-tier talent. As a CRM that is typically associated with small business, we feel like Zoho maintains relevance by getting hot at the right times.

Sage CRM is comparable to the . Buffalo has not really been relevant since the 90’s, and is more of a legacy franchise. Sage CRM and the Bills are the only teams with foreign ownership (the Bills are owned by Canadians, Sage is owned by the French). This CRM, like the Bills, plays very well at home; Sage is an on-premise system and the bills haven’t had a losing record in home in five years.

If you enjoyed this article, you may be interested in registering for our free webinar: CRM Superbowl 2017. Watch two of these Top CRM systems go head-to-head in our upcoming webinar on 02/02/2017 @ 2:00pm EST. Our top Account Executive will kick-off with SalesForce.com, and our EVP will be our SugarCRM coach. Together, they will tackle the question: Which CRM has the features that are right for you?

Pardot Users: CRM Integrations are in Danger

Back in summer of 2016, Brainsell warned that SalesForce.com announced no new software developments for CRM integration with Pardot. This marketing automation software released an update, naming their exclusive partnership with SalesForce.com.

So, what does this mean for current Pardot Users?

Pardot, renamed Marketing Cloud, will cease to support the following CRM Systems:

SugarCRM

NetSuite

Microsoft CRM

When is this change happening?

The integration between Pardot/Marketing Cloud will no longer function with as of June 2017. This is known as the “End of Life Date”.

What happens after the “End of Life” date?

Any CRM integrated functionality will no longer work, including single sign-on. As a result, list and activity views in your CRM, including all field syncing between your CRM and Pardot/Marketing Cloud will be affected.

What can you do?

Manual Imports:

Manually import data to your CRM, periodically

This includes importing prospects and opportunities manually.

This is a timely process with a high potential for human error.

Manually import data to your CRM, regularly for automated syncing.

Again, relying on a manual process to import mass amounts of marketing data.

Potential errors could cause marketing disconnect.

Find an Expert:

You can hire someone to develop an integration for you via com’s API. This can be a timely and expensive process.

Contact BrainSell for a free 30-minute system evaluation to determine the next best steps.

BrainSell can find alternative software systems, whether it is a new Marketing Automation Software, or a better designed CRM.

BrainSell’s top developers are capable of creating the API plug-In for SalesForce.com.

Why Use BrainSell?

We offer best-in-class business software, implementation and consulting. As a leading advisory and technology company, it is our goal to provide businesses of all sizes with a competitive advantage. Let us help you avoid interruption and continue business-as-usual.

Complete the form below for your free system evaluation. A BrainSell Marketing Automation and CRM expert will contact you shortly.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: SUMMER 2016

On June 14th, SalesForce.com announced that it had no development plans to ensure that SugarCRM’s integration with Pardot would continue to function properly.

The SugarCRM connector is deprecated and is not available for Pardot accounts that allow multiple prospects with the same email address. Accounts that don’t allow multiple prospects with the same email address integrate only with Sugar versions 5.4.X – 7.1.X. New development will not be made to integrate with newer or future versions of Sugar.

The statement was released on Pardot’s website along with directions on how to find out if your account allows this functionality: click here.

This news will come as a shock to Pardot/SugarCRM users, who have most likely just been upgraded to the new Sugar version 7.7.

For help assessing your Pardot and SugarCRM integration and to see what other marketing automation software options are available, contact us!

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